Category Archives: A: Highly Recommended Labor Films

This list of classic labor films is drawn from recommendations by experienced labor film festival organizers; if you have suggestions for additions, please submit them in the comments section below or email them to us at streetheat@dclabor.org

Synopsis: THE UPRISING OF ’34 tells the story of the General Strike of 1934, a massive but little-known strike by hundreds of thousands of Southern cotton mill workers during the Great Depression. The mill workers’ defiant stance – and the remarkable grassroots organizing that led up to it – challenged a system of mill owner control that had shaped life in cotton mill communities for decades.

Synopsis (IMDB): Paul Robeson narrates a mix of dramatizations and archival footage about the bill of rights being under attack during the 1930s by union busting corporations, their spies and contractors. In dramatizations, we see a farmer beaten for speaking up at a meeting, a union man murdered in a boarding house, two sharecroppers near Fort Smith Arkansas shot by men deputized by the local sheriff, a spy stealing the names of union members, and a dead Chicago union man eulogized. In archival footage we witness police and goons beating lawfully assembled union organizers, and we see men at work and union families at play. The narration celebrates patriotism and democracy.

Synopsis (IMDB): Born in Birmingham, Duff Anderson, the father of a male toddler, who lives with a nanny, re-locates to a small town to work on the railroad. He meets with and is attracted to Josie much to the chagrin of her preacher father. The marriage does take place nevertheless, both re-locate to live in their own house and he gets a job in a mill. He decides not to bring his son to live with them. Challenges arise when the Mill Foreman finds out that Duff is attempting to unionize the workers, forcing Duff to quit, and look for work elsewhere. Unable to reconcile himself to working on a daily wage of $2.50 picking cotton nor even as a waiter, he gets a job at a garage. He is enraged at a customer for belittling him and Josie, and is let go. Unemployed, unable to support his wife and son, he gets abusive and leaves – perhaps never to return.

Synopsis (IMDB): John and Mary sims are city-dwellers hit hard by the financial fist of The Depression. Driven by bravery (and sheer desperation) they flee to the country and, with the help of other workers, set up a farming community – a socialist mini-society based upon the teachings of Edward Gallafent. The newborn community suffers many hardships – drought, vicious raccoons and the long arm of the law – but ultimately pull together to reach a bread-based Utopia.

Synopsis (IMDB): During World War I, a poor black Southerner travels north to Chicago to get work in the city’s slaughterhouses, where he becomes embroiled in the organized labor movement. He becomes prominent as a leader of fellow African-Americans in the union, though many, including his best friend, view him as a sell-out.